Loony

by totallynotabrony

7: Cleanup on Aisle Nope

Time seemed to pass differently underwater. Arc’s office cubicle hadn’t given him a view of the sky either, but at least he was attuned to his building’s ebb and flow of traffic throughout the day. He had figured that taking a new job meant that he’d have to get used to a new system. He just hadn’t been planning on it being underwater.

Even Roxy’s voice sounded different to him. Somepony had explained that it was due to the necessary higher air pressure and a gas permeability spell to protect “air breathers.” Arc wasn’t a diver but had heard of effects like the bends that could arise from a pressurized environment.

Speaking of diving, the few windows around the office didn’t reveal much of the sea bottom. At one hundred meters deep, only faint blue-green light penetrated from the surface.

At least Arc was used to long waits in inhospitable climates, although the annex was the complete opposite of what he’d endured in Camelstan. Roxy seemed to be faring worse. Arc could see the tension in her shoulders and flight muscles as she sat in front of the computer. The two of them had so far used their downtime to learn a few things.

The Shade Network was the intranet that connected offices around the country. There was a wiki of sorts that was updated with articles as they were published. A few specialized sites hosted specific topics. There was also an e-mail client.

It was frustrating that there were only ten thousand or so pages. It was no World Wide Web and compared to the internet, finding something seemed incredibly difficult.

Roxy struggled through keywords, managing to find snippets of useful data, but nothing of value that she could read digitally. Arc was supportive, occasionally making suggestions drawn from his experience with unwieldy military systems.

Doria provided conversation, although not much of it was helpful. She processed acoustics, which actually involved looking at graphs of frequencies more often than listening. The undersea sensors could detect a much greater range than ears could hear.

Arc and Roxy decided to take lunch when the computer’s time said it was noon. There hadn’t been any kind of lunch rush among the seaponies around them. It looked like life under the sea was less structured and regulated.

They got up from the computer. Doria said, “Oh, are you going to lunch? I think I’ll come with you.”

She led them to what was apparently the lunch room. A stallion stood behind a griddle making simple things like omelets and veggie burgers. Kai and a few other seaponies waited for orders. Others simply ate what they had brought. Hot food was apparently in enough demand to warrant a cook in the underwater work center.

“Jiffy’s a pretty good chef,” said Doria, gesturing to the griller. “This is about the cheapest way to get land food down here.”

“I’ve noticed that the closer the restaurant gets to the water, the more expensive the food is,” Roxy said. The three of them submitted orders and put their cash in a box beside the grill.
“Like the twenty dollar burgers from the oceanside restaurant at the Hotel Unicorado,” Arc added.

Roxy smiled. “Staying there was your idea for a honeymoon.”

“It’s always weird talking to surface ponies,” Doria noted. “Everypony is always so fascinated by the water. I think a lot of seaponies wouldn’t mind seeing all the stuff on land, but nopony ever does. We get the same news and TV and such, but it’s like watching through a spyglass.”

“I never thought about it like that before,” Roxy admitted. “From now on I might have a different opinion of having a nice relaxing lie on the beach.”

“Ugh, the beach,” muttered Doria. “The sand is sticky and hot, and if you dry out you lose your tail. I couldn’t imagine such dry skin. That’s on top of the swimsuits that look uncomfortable and the sunburns.”

“Swimsuits are to keep sand out of where you don’t want sand,” Roxy replied.

Arc grinned. “And she looks good in one.”

Roxy rolled her eyes and gave him a playful swat with her wing.

Just then, Jiffy called, “Order up!” Arc stood and went to get the burgers. He returned to the table and distributed them. While the sandwiches looked rather plain, Doria was right in saying that Jiffy was good at what he did.

Kai came over, having finished his own meal. “Roxy, Arc, I received an e-mail from Sapphire a few minutes ago. Apparently you’re both needed for something topside.”

“Both of us?” Roxy asked. Arc was the one that seemed to be in more danger. Sisal had even called him by name.

“She didn’t go into detail, but your escort should be here shortly.” Message delivered, Kai turned away.

Arc and Roxy were more than happy to pack up in preparation to leave. Deckplate came out of his office and waited with them beside the door to the outside.

“So how does this portal thing work?” Arc asked him.

“We have some very specialized entomologists,” Deckplate began.

Roxy frowned. “Insect experts?”

“Right. They use reality bugs to create holes in space.”

“Reality bugs?” Arc repeated.

Deckplate nodded. “Like termites, but they eat the universe. With careful control, you can use them to build shortcuts.” He gestured at the door.

As if on cue, the door swung open to reveal Granite. His eyes landed on Arc and Roxy. “Come on. Both of you have things to do.”

The greeting was rather brusque, but it was an invitation to leave the underwater headquarters. Arc and Roxy happily accepted the offer to cross through the doorway and back into the warmer air of San Palomino.

Granite led them down the hallway and past the security desk to the front door. Reminded of entry procedures, Arc said, “When are you going to build the new spell that includes us in it?”

“When I can,” Granite replied, pushing open the front door and exiting the building. “It takes time to gather everything I need. Plus everything else going on recently has put that on a back burner.”

“I thought you were a freelancer,” Arc said. “You seem to be covering a lot of the same jobs as the average Shade, like investigations.”

“I’m officially a contractor.” Granite showed them to an older sedan with civilian plates. “That just means I get more things on my terms. It’s the only way I would agree to the job.”

There was a small bouquet of flowers in the backseat of the car. Granite gestured to them while his passengers were getting in. “Those are for you, Roxy. They’re from Fancypants.”

The tag attached to the flowers was an apology note.
Mrs. Deoxyribonucleic,
I beg your pardon for what I said. I periodically need to remind myself to be more considerate. It is my sincere wish that this will not affect our future interactions.
-Fancy

“Who’s that?” Arc asked.

“A vampire,” Roxy replied. After consideration she added, “We had a disagreement the other day.”

“He doesn’t call himself Fancy for nothing,” said Granite. “Personally, I would have just let it go and assumed everypony involved would forget. What’s the old quote? ‘Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and some shit.’”

It hadn’t sounded like a joke, but Arc and Roxy traded smiles as they belted in. Granite started the car and they set off. As he pulled into traffic, he said, “We’re going to the train yards north of the base. They found a dead gryphon there. He might be a terrorist.”

“Is there a terrorist cell here in San Palomino?” Arc asked.

Granite shrugged. “Maybe. You saw the car bomb. I think we all know the implications of that. We don’t need these idiots playing their cat and mouse games here.”

Roxy tapped Granite on the shoulder. “That reminds me. I need to go home and feed my cat.”
“We could also take the opportunity for a shower after spending the night in the annex,” Arc added.

Granite muttered something under his breath but asked, “Which way?”

Going home didn’t take them more than an extra hour out of their way. Arc and Roxy hurried through showers and Dinah got her cat food. Granite waited impatiently but quietly.

Back on the road, Granite pointed the car towards the rail yard that served the port. He didn’t take a direct route, maneuvering through a few curves that were unnecessary. Arc noticed, assuming he was checking for a tail. Arc wondered if that was how he had been tracked, resulting in a phone call from Sisal.

Granite flashed a badge to the rent-a-cop and went on through the front gate. The train yard was cluttered with moving cargo and it took a careful watch to stay out of the way of locomotives and forklifts.

Since the rise of containerized shipping, bulk cargo had fallen out of favor and the warehouses along the waterfront used to store it had been repurposed for other things. Apparently, that included dumping bodies.

There was a familiar-looking car already outside. Inside, Proficient and Harv stood over a bloodstain on the floor, both of them looking impatient.

“The cleaners have already gone over the scene,” Harv said. He gestured to the still-sticky floor. “Most of it is gone.”

“It was quite a job,” Proficient added. “The mess was spread around. Whoever this gryphon was, he was probably tortured.”

Arc frowned. “Over what?”

Proficient gestured with a hoof. “That’s what you’re here to find out.”

“We’re going to gather anything we can from the area,” Granite said. “The forensics team did what they can. We’ll do the rest.”

Arc and Roxy shared a glance. “What do you expect the two of us to do?” she asked Granite.
“You’ve both got talents,” he said. “Figure it out.”

Granite began to unpack a kit he had brought from the car. Arc and Roxy stood together for a moment, taking in the scene.

The bloodstain was near the corner, away from the door. The concrete floor was chipped and scarred from years of use. A few broken scraps of crates and small leftover piles of material were scattered around.

Roxy wrinkled her nose at the smells hanging in the air. The fresh blood was the heaviest, but the old building had many layers of odor.

Arc took a step closer to the blood. He didn’t focus on it, instead looking for anything around it that might help.

He looked for white scars on the concrete but didn’t find any. This corner of the warehouse had not been recently traveled, and it didn’t seem that the area had been prepared for the killing.

Roxy approached the blood, stooping to have a closer look. There was a lot of it, and it hadn’t puddled neatly at a single point. Small droplets had splashed in a scattered pattern away from the main pool. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t over quickly or cleanly.

She moved into a crouch to get closer, slowly moving her attention outwards along the floor. A few tracks of drops were arranged in definite arcs, as if thrown from the blade of a knife.

Within a few feet was a about a spoonful of a white granular substance, much of it ground into the floor. Roxy reached out to it with a wing, brushing up a small amount with the tips of her feathers.

Arc knelt beside her. Roxy raised her feathers to her nose. “This smells like some sort of chemical substance. Maybe like a fuel.”

“Anyone have a lighter?” Arc asked. Granite looked up from his work and tossed over a cheap butane lighter. Putting a flame to the powder produced an easy burn. The small amount was quickly consumed.

“What do you think it is?” Roxy asked.

Arc said, “If I had to guess, RDX.”

“That’s something,” remarked Proficient.

“Does it prove that Sisal Twist is working with terrorists?” Roxy asked.

“It shows that there’s a connection,” Harv replied. “Although ‘working with’ might be a bit of a stretch if she had one of them brutally murdered.”

Granite had finished his preparations and came over. Arc and Roxy moved away to give him space and conferred their findings a few feet away. It seemed likely that a particularly violent murder, or maybe even torture, had occurred. As the location didn’t look prepared, the act might not have been premeditated.

The evidence only raised more questions. Was it a meeting gone bad? Was that how the white powder got spilled? The two of them watched Granite work, wondering if perhaps he could answer some of those questions.

A thin haze of smoke was rising out of an earthenware bowl that sat between Granite’s forehooves. His horn glowed and he appeared to be directing the growing cloud. It spread out over the blood, leaving an herbal scent in the air. If nothing else, it made a nifty air freshener.

Harv stood looking bored. Proficient was near the wall, although he was not about to lean on it with his expensive jacket. Arc and Roxy were close, both intent on whatever it was that Granite was doing.

It came as a surprise when four ponies with weapons walked in.

The newcomers ran the gamut of body types and one was a mare. They shared the same color of bandana, however, positioned somewhere on their bodies. Their guns were not the best, but still dangerous enough.

Granite briefly looked up from his work in annoyance, but turned back to it. Proficient stood straighter, a worried look on his face. Harv was suddenly wearing an expression of concentration. Arc and Roxy both turned to face the threat, hooves meeting as each took an identical step forward.

Harv put his hoof out towards the four aggressors. “I take it you didn’t see the car with government plates outside?”

“Shut up,” one of them replied, although Harv’s friendly demeanor seemed to catch them by surprise.

Harv kept talking. “We’re federal agents. People know we’re here. Turn around and leave now. You’ll still be wanted, but not for anything more serious than assault.”

That put a few seconds of silence in the air, but one of them finally said, “That’s not what we were paid to do.”

“Shut up!” the mare hissed at him. She gestured with her gun. “Hooves in the air where we can see them.” She aimed her gun at Granite. “You over there! Hooves in the air I said!”

Arc could see the situation degrading. It was true that no plan ever survived first contact with the enemy, and that applied to the enemy just as much. However, uncoordinated adversaries with guns might actually be more dangerous.

Harv took a few steps forward. “Look, if I were you I wouldn’t annoy Granite when he’s working. He's not the patient type.”

The mare stared at him in disbelief. “Are you ponies deaf!? I said hooves up!”

Harv smiled as if they were having a pleasant chat about the weather. “I know you were paid to come kill whoever you found in this building, but is the money really worth it? When you take contracts from shady people like Ms. Twist, you get into situations like this.”

“How did you know that?” demanded the stallion closest to Harv. The mare rolled her eyes and seemed about ready to explode.

Harv paused. “Oh…you’ve got a rat in your group.”

The stallion looked at the mare in confusion. She merely growled at the news and raised her gun to take aim at Granite.

Harv sighed “Tsk, tsk!”

Without even looking in their direction Granite tilted his head to the side, sweeping his horn in a wide horizontal arc, a flash of magic knocking over the entire group of gun toters.

Harv dove out of the way, rolled, and came up with his gun in his hoof. Proficient already had his own weapon out. They took aim while the four attackers were down. Arc had pulled out his own gun while Harv was still in the air. Old reflexes die hard.

One of the stallions on the floor recovered more quickly than the others and raised his pistol. Granite’s horn flared briefly with a spark of magic and the cartridge in the chamber exploded without the bullet leaving the barrel. Shocked, the stallion dropped the ruined gun.

Granite went back to his work as if nothing had happened.

Harv walked up to the mare, and kicked away her weapon. “You’re lucky he didn’t get annoyed. This place was already a bloody mess!” He brushed an area of the floor off and sat down on his haunches. “So, do you come here often?”

Roxy raised an eyebrow at his interrogation technique. However, there were more important things to do. Taking out her phone, she called headquarters. Tammy answered the call and Roxy passed her a request for more Shades for backup. She explained the situation, making sure to note that it was under control.

“We’ll get someone to take them into custody,” Tammy said. “If Harv is there, he probably already learned a lot from them, but we’ll do a deeper interrogation back at HQ.”

Ending the call, Roxy turned her attention back to the scene. Harv and Proficient had already removed the weapons from the floor and stood watch. Granite, seeming unperturbed, had gone back to studying the blood. He hadn’t reacted to the entire scene with very much excitement, not even showing strain in taking out four ponies from halfway across the room, a feat of telekinesis that very few unicorns could manage.

In minutes, another car and a van had arrived with enough Shades to secure four detainees. Arc said, “I wonder where they will be taken.”

“Hopefully somewhere worse than where they’re holding Buttercup,” Roxy replied.

Cleaning up took a while. Getting all the evidence accounted for - and then washed off the warehouse floor - took painstaking effort. It was evening by the time the job was finished.

The five of them retired to a Mexicanter restaurant east of the train yard that sat in the shadow of the interstate. It was a small place that advertised seaweed tacos as its star item. After recently visiting the bottom of the sea, however Arc and Roxy opted for something else.

There was little to no conversation. Not that they could talk about anything. They might have been doing well just to stop focusing on the bloody scene in the building.

It was after the waitress had taken orders that Roxy’s phone rang. She saw that it was Tammy and answered it.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said. “We intercepted a transmission from Sisal Twist and got a recording.”

Roxy told her to hold. To the table he said, “Tammy has a recording of Sisal.”

Granite pulled a thin chain from his pocket. It looked like a long necklace. He laid it in the center of the table and motioned for Roxy to put the phone down in the center. Then, Granite spoke a few words under his breath and announced, “We’re secure. Just touch the chain to listen.”

Tammy had apparently been through this before. After getting the go ahead, she played the tape. The recording was scratchy, but Arc recognized it as Sisal’s voice.

“…not afraid of you and I won’t tolerate any more of this. We’ve had unforeseen setbacks and if I get any wind that you had anything to do with it, you’ll be just as dead as the last gryphon. You know what I want and as long as you keep doing what I say I’ll make sure you get what you want. The bomb tomorrow is going to be public. I think you’re going to like…”

“Sorry,” said Tammy. “That’s all we got before the satellite passed over. It was a VHF signal going through commercial encryption. It may have been going to an autopatch again; we’re still looking into it.”

“Did we get a location?” Arc asked.

“Vaguely somewhere in the San Palomino bay area. Sorry, but pirating signals from military systems doesn’t get the best results.”

“When was this recorded?” Proficient asked.

“Two hours ago,” Tammy said.

“Great,” muttered Harv, checking his watch. “We have less than six hours until midnight.”

“I’ll call again if I learn anything else,” Tammy promised. After a moment she added, “Good luck.”

Comments

[Dash The Stampede]

It really kills me inside to see something this awesome get such an under-rated view count. I love the action and worldbuilding you've got going on here, they mix a bunch of the best worlds, albeit a bit blander than one would expect. I feel like your view is like that of a reserved law show on television, where there's action, but mostly monologue and plot, not so much "explosions boom boom guns!", like most cop show fics.

But there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just honored that through the "meh" reaction you've gotten here, you keep posting new chapters and keep chugging through the words, that earns quite a bit of respect.

So thank you, TNaB, for continuing to prove that we are all a little bit Loony. And that this fic is awesome.
~Dash The Stampede

[metallusionsismagic]

After recently visiting the bottom of the sea, however Arc and Roxy opted for something else.

Add comma after however.
Silas did get what he wanted, after all, Arc slept with the fishes!

[nemryn]

He hadn’t reacted to the entire scene with very much excitement, not even showing strain in taking out four ponies from halfway across the room, a feat of telekinesis that very few unicorns could manage.

And that's why he's a wizard!